that would give a great push to those in iran if that strike were to happen who might be advocating building a nuclear bomb so that would be an irrational then step to say nothing of the regional questions of a conflict with iran because now we are facing instability in the region spreading from mali libya in the north west africa all the way to iran speaking of mali how do you assess france's military operation there i believe that the extremists in the north made a pretty bad miscalculation they got carried away and they decided to make a military move to the south heading towards the capital bamako then the government of mali a request of the french to send in the troops and that it and where we understood were not generations because in terms of international law it was completely clean clear a request of the government because of a clear threat to its security and the like integrity of the country so we

supported that in our discussions in the security council and basically everything that which is happening and now the african troops are moved into in support of the french is within the sort of within the context of the resolution of the security council i should say that we do have a little space about sometimes quite a clear morning as discussions in the security council this is not one of those situations this is a situation where people understand the dangers and also have a very frank exchange of views about what needs to be done in order to avoid putting the united nations in overly precarious or dangerous situation what effect did the arab spring have on the situation that's unfolding in mali right now one question of spring the dramatic events in libya. we're in the course of the crisis. of course

a lot of weapons were brought into libya and there was a lot of there were lots of weapons as it is but still many more weapons were brought into libya during the recent hearings which then secretary of state clinton had in the house of representatives one of the congressman said that they had information that qatar with a wink and nod as he put it from the united states brought in twenty thousand tons of weapons into libya and you know twenty thousand tons you can arm is small terrorist army and so on of course this is exactly what has happened in mali definitely we see a spillover from the libyan crisis to to a neighboring country and most likely the spillover has affected other places as well for instance it may well be there are many indications to that effect that the terrorist attack in the in the in the jury had something to do i mean close to the libyan border also had some sort of libyan connection in terms of people maybe

weapons terrorists emanating from libya participating in that attack the u.s. now insists that their support for the syrian opposition is non-lethal could it be that the allies of the united states are supporting are providing more weapons at the wink and nod of the world this is definitely the case i'm in the middle of the united states chose to stay clean of the bad guys at some point of the crisis the did realize it seems that things going very wrong you know that various terrorist groups were coming in that the radical islamists are where we were active there so the they were beginning to realize maybe before some of our other western colleagues that things were making a very dangerous turn and that then original scenario they had in mind that it would take just a couple of months to topple the assad regime and then sort of democracy will try and. it was completely unrealistic and had nothing to do with the with the actual

situation on the ground but i mean do notice this is an extremely powerful country definitely with a lot of interest influence on for example such a country as qatar which is reportedly the main source of weapons and support for for armed opposition so if the united states were to want to be logical and read it take a stand they certainly. could could make it clear to those who supply weapons to to to syrian opposition groups so the fact they simply say that they themselves are not doing that does not does not really absolve them completely from responsibility of what is happening there in terms of the activity of on the position groups you said that at some point u.s. officials started started to realize and i think that that is the sense that a lot of people are getting because the administration the obama administration

seems to be a lot more cautious talking about syria now as opposed to a year ago for example they talk about how complex the situation is on the ground have you noticed that change yes yes this is what i'm saying this this changes is a is clear and this change is clear here in our informal discussions in the security council clearly we the one could feel that. their understanding of the situation has become much closer to our understanding of the complexity of. what is going on there so this is what i think makes it important to continue dialogue in that format but there is one disconcerting thing among other things there is a lot of talk about chemical weapons in syria which is which is a valid concern and we have also talked very seriously with the syrian government and they have given us all sorts of assurances that the as they put it if there are chemical weapons in syria they do not intend to. to use those weapons but to our

liking there is too much talk about that in sort of in a threatening context that should something happen then you know all sorts of things will get done so sometimes it does give us an impression that somebody is looking for a pretext for military intervention to say nothing of the fact that this kind of narrative we fear might provide incentive for the opposition to do something extremely dangerous with chemical weapons what kind of an interference what kind of an international effort would russia support well no no i think what the seed in use is more diplomatic support we were the only ones who are trying to work in both with the government and the opposition to bring them to the table to try to form that transitional body which is referred to in the in the geneva document now. our partners keep saying that years years the geneva document indeed this is the only rational. document point of departure which is there on the table in order to try

to arrange a political dialogue between the government on the opposition why were you reluctant then because because you're not there was this document i suppose they still were clinging to their idea of toppling the government and the opposition was was not prepared to go into dialogue with the government our western partners made a mistake and clear all of. the very bad signal when they. sort of recognized this newly formed in the national coalition on the basis of a platform which rejected any dialogue with the government which called for the destruction of the government structures but on the basis of that but from the they did they did recognize them however recently there has been a very interesting and important development potentially very important development and this is the statement by the leader of the coalition. about which initially

were very skeptical and still it has many problems of this coalition it does not have much of a unity within itself it has some contradictions with other opposition groups but still it's clear we have to take it as a fact and the leader of that opposition mr gottlieb recently made a statement which attracted a lot of attention saying that he is prepared to enter into dialogue with the government here give some preconditions for that but it's get was crucially important for the first time from an important member of the opposition. this statement was delivered so we think that what the international community should do now is to encourage this kind of attitude and of course this statement came after a statement which it was made by president assad early january i think which was criticized by many because it was not going far enough because it was too dark for cetera et cetera maybe much of a criticism of that criticism was was was accurate but he did talk about dialogue

with the opposition as well so in our view the need of the voter all of the international community working from various directions is to try to grab those threads from ball size and to see if they can meet you know if those two thirds can meet thank you. mission to teach me.

the way. i.

thank you.

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a free media. tom. a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything is all. i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. it.